


In a Cabin By the Sea

by Liberte_Egalite_Broadway



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Character Study, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Happy Ending, Podcast WLW Week, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 01, Probably no one will ever read this, because I want to be a gay podcast couple going to the ocean, but that's okay because I love this ship, this is the second gay podcast couple that I've written going to the ocecan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 05:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18423936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liberte_Egalite_Broadway/pseuds/Liberte_Egalite_Broadway
Summary: Oleta went to the cabin by the sea.





	In a Cabin By the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> The entire Season 1 of this show was so painful that these two can't not have a happy ending, right? (I haven't listened past season 1 so no spoilers please). 
> 
> This fic is part of WLW week, a collection for queer women in podcasts! Please post to raise awareness and support!

Oleta went to the cabin by the sea. 

She took the money that Hester left for her, hidden in the woods underneath a stone, she bought a supply of food to supplement what the other woman had left for her, and she headed off. It was night when she arrived. Rain fell from the dark sky. She could see the distant waves past the beach, writhing and tumbling like a chained animal. They were black against the navy blue of night. Oleta could have looked at them for a while longer, but instead, she went into the cabin before someone noticed her. Her fear was with her still. Even then. Even as far from the Institute as she was. 

She spent a week alone in the cabin by the sea. The food supplies dwindled, but there was plenty of food, so she wasn't in any trouble. She left the lights turned off and the window curtains closed. During the day, she explored every nook and cranny of the cabin. There was a heart scraped into the paint on one of the cabinets in the bathroom. Anyone who lived here could have left that, but she let herself think that it had been Hester. She didn't know how long it would be before she saw Hester again. She needed thoughts like that. 

Before they were ten, they saw each other every day. Before they were ten, everything was different. 

After a week, she went outside. With her shoes in her hand and her eyes scanning the place around her, she walked down the beach and felt the sand in her toes. The waves lapped at her bare feet as she stood ankle-deep in the water, watching gulls float through the endless sky. 

The cabin by the sea had furniture. Oleta rearranged it. She took pillows from the guest bedroom and put them on the couch. She tied back her dark cloud of hair and scrubbed down the floors with the cleaning supplies she found in a cupboard near the basement; once the floor was clean, she lay down a moth-eaten rug that she moved from the upstairs landing. 

When she ran out of ways to rearrange the furniture, she made herself go into the town. She saw the streets and tried to imagine how Hester had seen them. She went to the bakery, the one that the other woman had recommended in her cassette, and she bought herself a scone. A sign on the bakery window said, "Now hiring. All part-time shifts. 9.25 an hour." Oleta took an application without saying anything to the woman at the register and scurried back to the cabin, paper bag in hand. 

It took her two days to work up enough courage to fill out the application. Only her food supply running out actually got her back into the town. 

She sat on a bench after turning in the application, and she ate a raspberry meringue. Hester always loved raspberries. There was a raspberry bush near her bedroom window, back in the days before she was ten. They sat there for hours, lounging on the grass, popping berries into each other's mouths, holding hands. Once, she had leaned over to kiss Hester, in the quick shy way that children do, and tasted the raspberry on her mouth. 

Oleta began to work in the bakery in the town by the sea. She swept the floor and stocks the display cases. She was good at her job. With the money, she bought food, even though she was allowed to take home as much free food as she wanted from the bakery. She also bought new curtains and a new rug for the cabin by the sea - blue, the color of Hester's eyes. 

A month passed. Then another month. She thought to herself that perhaps Hester would come, and she wondered if she was okay with that. 

She kept working at the bakery in town. Every sweet tasted different, but all were good, even the pistachio cookies, which she was hesitant to try at first in her dislike for pistachio. She brought home bags.  _Home._ Home was a word that described a place, a place that was a cabin by the sea where one woman lived alone. 

At night, she fingered the scars on her stomach, the Y-shaped scar where Hester had to cut her. She wondered what it would feel like for Hester's fingers to trace that scar instead, to hear Hester's voice asking her if she was okay. 

She continued to live in the cabin by the sea, but one day she realized that she was lonely, and that she had been lonely for a while. 

But she wouldn't be lonely forever, she reminded herself. Hester would come. They would fall asleep in the bed, with the broken boxspring. She would save up enough money from the bakery to buy a new boxspring and they would sleep in that bed together. They would stand on the beach and feel the water lap at their feet. They would kiss, and hold hands, and eat sweets from the bakery. 

The furniture was all changed out in the bedroom. Mostly changed out in the bathroom. Oleta wondered if Hester would mind. It made her happy, to rearrange and decorate and make the house her own. But it had been Hester's house first and someday it would be their house, and what if she had changed it too much? 

At night when she couldn't sleep, she lay on the bed with the new boxspring and breathed. 

Breathe in. 

And out. 

Maybe it would always be like this, and Hester would never come. Maybe this was all there was. Maybe she was okay with that. This was her life now, and it was a good night. 

She came home from the bakery one day, tired but happy. A cardboard box of muffins propped across her left arm; a shopping bag with cartons of cookies swung from her right wrist. She hummed a song to herself as she went up the little lane and opened the door. Lost in thought, she barely noticed that the door was already unlocked. 

Oleta set down the baked goods in the kitchen and walked to the living room, pulling back her dark cloud of hair. She had to move the couch today, to lay down a new rug, and -

She stopped dead as her eyes lifted to the couch. It was moved slightly already, like someone had jumped up on it too quickly. That someone was watching her with gentle blue eyes. 

"Hello, Oleta," said Hester. "Do you remember me?" 


End file.
